Of course, when it gets to Laguerre’s I know all about it.  I know the old rotting landing-wharf where Monsieur moors his boats,—­the one with the little seat is still there; and Lucette’s big eyes are just as brown, and her hair just as black, and her stockings and slippers just as dainty on Sundays as when first I knew her.  And the wooden bench is still there, where the lovers used to sit; only Monsieur, her father, tells me that Francois works very late in the big city,—­three mouths to feed now, you see,—­and only when le petit Francois is tucked away in his crib in the long summer nights, and Lucette has washed the dishes and put on her best apron, and the Bronx stops still in a quiet pool to listen, is the bench used as in the old time when Monsieur discovered the lovers by the flash of his lantern.

Then I know where it floats along below Laguerre’s, and pulls itself together in a very dignified way as it sails under the brand-new bridge,—­the old one, propped up on poles, has long since paid tribute to a spring freshet,—­and quickens its pace below the old Dye-house,—­also a wreck now (they say it is haunted),—­and then goes slopping along in and out of the marshes, sousing the sunken willow roots, oozing through beds of weeds and tangled vines.

But only a very little while ago did I know where it began to leave off all its idle ways and took really to the serious side of life; when it began rushing down long, stony ravines, plunging over respectable, well-to-do masonry dams, skirting once costly villas, whispering between dark defiles of rock, and otherwise disporting itself as becomes a well-ordered, conventional, self-respecting mountain stream, uncontaminated by the encroachments and frivolities of civilized life.

All this begins at Fordham.  Not exactly at Fordham, for you must walk due east from the station for half a mile, climb a fence, and strike through the woods before you hear its voice and catch the gleam of its tumbling current.

They will all be there when you go—­all the quaint nooks, all the delights of leaf, moss, ripple, and shade, of your early memories.  And in the half-hour, too,—­less if you are quick-footed,—­from your desk or shop in the great city.

No, you never heard of it.  I knew that before you said a word.  You thought it was the dumping-ground of half the cast-off tinware of the earth; that only the shanty, the hen-coop, and the stable overhung its sluggish waters, and only the carpet shaker, the sod gatherer, and the tramp infested its banks.

I tell you that in all my wanderings in search of the picturesque, nothing within a day’s journey is half as charming.  That its stretches of meadow, willow clumps, and tangled densities are as lovely, fresh, and enticing as can be found—­yes, within a thousand miles of your door.  That the rocks are encrusted with the thickest of moss and lichen, gray, green, black, and brilliant emerald.  That the trees are superb, the solitude and rest complete.  That it is finer, more subtle, more exquisite than its sister brooks in the denser forest, because that here and there it shows the trace of some human touch,—­and nature is never truly picturesque without it,—­the broken-down fence, the sagging bridge, and vine-covered roof.